


Autocorrect This

by performativezippers



Series: Copy Edits, or all of the ways a slip of the hand can lead to something good [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, S A N V E R S, canon compliant through that one, even though i SWORE i would never, in which maggie is extra as fuuuuuck, in which we deal with the fallout of using the wrong "your" in a text to your ex, through 3x11 or whatever bullshit we just saw, you know the one where alex babysits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: “Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”“Uh…something the matter there, Sawyer?”She doesn’t even look up from her phone. “Fuck!” She tosses the fucking phone across her desk, watching as it skids across case files and paperwork before swan diving, like all her hopes and dreams, onto the dingy carpet.Who the fuck carpets a precinct bullpen, anyway? The coffee-stain budget alone must be astronomical.[AKA the one where Sanvers gets back together because Maggie used the wrong 'your' in her text to Alex]





	Autocorrect This

**Author's Note:**

> This is all because of tweets from Roadie and a thought-worm that wouldn't leave me alone. Usually I wait longer to post things after I write them, but I wrote this all today, damn it, and I'm working all weekend, so HERE.
> 
> #YourYou'reBetterBeRight

“Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , fuck!”

“Uh…something the matter there, Sawyer?”

She doesn’t even look up from her phone. “ _Fuck!_ ” She tosses the fucking phone across her desk, watching as it skids across case files and paperwork before swan diving, like all her hopes and dreams, onto the dingy carpet.

Who the fuck carpets a precinct bullpen, anyway? The coffee-stain budget alone must be astronomical.

But Ruiz hasn’t even blinked. He just reaches down, picks up her phone, and sets it gently on her desk. Conveniently out of reach of where she’s slumping in her chair, but it’s off the nasty floor.

“You know,” he says, and she isn’t looking but she can tell that he’s laughing, “whatever happened, I don’t think it’s the little phone’s fault.”

“Oh, please,” she says, finally looking up at him, letting herself vent the frustration that’s been building for…well, months now. “It’s 100% the _little phone’s_ fault.”

Ruiz perches on the side of her desk, and she grumbles at him while she yanks files from underneath his butt. She’s told him a million times she doesn’t like it when his ass is on her paperwork, but he’s seemed content to let the constructive criticism roll off his back.

“Talk to Uncle Ruiz,” he says with this smile that he thinks makes him look benevolent but really just makes Maggie want to smack him. “What did the bitty phone do to you today, Sawyer?” But if she did give in to her urge to hit him upside the head, that would be the third time today, and she likes being his partner and she also likes not being in trouble with HR, so she just grits her teeth instead.

“It fucking autocorrected me, and now I look like a fucking dumbass.”

Ruiz looks at her, hard. “Hmm,” he says, clearly trying to do some detecting of his own. “I mean, you’re never one to text with all those missing letters like my daughter used to, but you’ve sent me texts about ‘ducking paperwork’ enough for me know this isn’t your first embarrassing go around.”

Maggie exhales through her teeth, wishing she weren’t surrounded by people who are constantly trying to figure out things about her.

“So,” he asks, after a pause that should have been more than long enough to indicate that Maggie isn’t planning on sharing more. “Why’s autocorrect all under your skin?” He leans in a little, like he does during interrogations. “Why all the profanity?”

If asked, Maggie would insist that she absolutely hates Ruiz, but one thing she secretly loves about him is that he uses words like “profanity” in normal conversation. She especially loves it when he does it with perps.

She does not, however, secretly love how devoted he is to learning every embarrassing thing about her. She knows there’s no way out of this conversation, so she grunts and sighs and clenches her jaw as she tells the truth. “It was a text to Alex.”

There’s a moment of a loud, ringing silence, before Ruiz manages to choke out an, “Oh shit!” that sounds much more amused than Maggie would like it to.

“You texted her?” He finally asks, after Maggie doesn’t dignify his profanity with a response.

She nods. “I left my passport at her place.”

Ruiz knits his eyebrows again. “What was autocorrected? Did it change ‘passport’ to ‘pussy’ or something?”

Well, _that_ gets a reaction out of her. She shoves him, hard and quick, off her desk, and he’s still so delighted by his joke that he’s not prepared at all, and actually lands ass-first on the ground.

Serves him right.

“Wait, seriously? It _did_?” He’s still on the ground but he has a look on his face like a trick-or-treating kid coming face-to-face with their first ever king-sized candy bar.

“No, you fucking dipshit, of course it didn’t. And, how the fuck would I have ‘left my pussy’ at her apartment? I know it’s been a while since you’ve gotten some, but in most situations, the pussy and the person it belongs to? They remain attached.”

He snorts as he picks himself up off the floor. He perches back on her desk like nothing happened, but he’s careful to sit in a slightly different spot, so that she has to yank three more files out from under his butt.

“So? If it wasn’t a sex mistake, why’d you throw your phone on the ground?”

Maggie scowls. “It slipped.”

He snorts again, and Maggie wonders why any woman has ever dated him. Sure, he’s tall and muscular and handsome and has a good job and is kind to pets and is a great dad and let Maggie stay in his apartment for the first six weeks after the breakup, but the snorting is really beyond the pale.

“It used the wrong ‘your,’” she admits with a grimace.

“The wrong ‘your?’” He shakes his head, reaching for the phone and handing it out for her to unlock it. “Lemme see.”

She rolls her eyes but unlocks it, thumbing quickly to the offending message.

_“Hey, I’m so sorry to bother you. I know it’s been a while now. I hope your doing well, but I have a favor to ask. I’m going out of the country and need my passport. I think I left it at your place. Can you look around and possibly mail it to me? My address is 709 Halston Street, National City, 44333. xo Maggie"_

Ruiz reads it silently to himself, his lips moving over the words. After what feels like hours, he holds the phone out so they can both see it, his face somewhere between quizzical and confused. “Uh, here, right?” he asks, indeed pointing to the offending word. “ _I hope your doing well_. That’s wrong, right?”

Maggie groans. “Of course it’s wrong, you dipshit.”

It’s her second time calling him that in the last five minutes, and at least the fifth time today, but he just shrugs. “I don’t think it’s that big a deal,” he says. “She probably didn’t even notice.”

“She – _what_? How could she not notice? It’s like a huge red flag, screaming _look at me, I’m an idiot_.”

But then Ruiz does that thing with his face where he’s clearly trying to be kind and sweet with her, and Maggie tries to remind herself that she hates him. “There’s no way she thinks you’re an idiot,” his soft little voice says. “And if she does, then she’s the idiot.”

“Wow,” Maggie deadpans, desperately trying to not feel anything, “was that Shakespeare?”

But then he narrows his eyes, and sizes her up, and Maggie knows, with a sudden drop in her gut, that she’s in for it now. Because Ruiz can be the softest puppy in the universe, but when he’s ready to fuck with you, he comes _hard_.

“You know,” he says, his face a perfect mask of innocent confusion, “I’ve never seen autocorrect pick the wrong ‘your’ before. Not once in my life. In fact,” He pauses for a moment and gives that one particular grin and Maggie’s intestines freeze with nervous fear. “I’d say it’s wildly improbable that this was autocorrect at all.”

Maggie stands, so she’s not so much lower than he is anymore. “What are you implying,” she growls.

He stands too, and now she’s fucked because he’s 6’4 and she’s…not. “I’m not implying anything,” he says, and he’s just so fucking happy, like when a perp accidentally confesses. “I’m just noting that the more likely scenario…is that you typed the wrong ‘your’ all on your own.”

Maggie swipes the phone from his hand, stalking off as best she can.

But she’s not fast enough, so his final words ring in her ears as she hits the stairwell. “So maybe she _will_ think you’re an idiot.”

 

* * *

 

“I’m not an idiot.”

Alex has not blinked or breathed or picked her jaw up off the ground in the five seconds since swinging her apartment door open and realizing that it’s Maggie standing in her hallway.

“Uh,” Alex stammers, “excuse me?”

“I’m not an idiot,” Maggie repeats, sounding a little bit like, unfortunately, an idiot. “It was autocorrect.”

Alex takes a couple seconds to just blink a few times. She screws up her a face little bit like she’s trying to remember something, or like she’s trying to find a clue about if she’s woken up on the wrong Earth again.

“I know the difference between ‘yours.’”

“What?” Alex finally manages.

“The text I sent you,” Maggie huffs, impatient to get this over with. “About my passport. It – there was the wrong ‘your.’” She pauses for a beat. “It was autocorrect,” she adds again, her voice a little desperate.

Alex is still leaning against her door, which isn’t even open all the way. “I – okay.”

“I just…I didn’t want you to think I was stupid, or something. Or that I hadn’t cared enough to not proofread it, or whatever.”

Alex softens a little at that, and Maggie wishes immediately she could take it back. That wasn’t what she meant to say. That was a little too…whatever.

“Why don’t you come in,” Alex says softly, starting to open the door further.

“No,” Maggie starts to protest, because she didn’t come here for that. Not to make up, and not to sit on the couch that used to be hers in the home that used to be hers with the girl who used to be hers. But Alex is pulling the door open further and so Maggie has her first glimpse of the right side of Alex’s body.

She hears herself say, “Holy shit,” before her brain fully clocks what she’s seeing. “What—Alex, what happened?”

She looks up from the cast encircling Alex’s leg to see that Alex’s face is a little pale, and Maggie doesn’t know if it’s from the standing or from seeing Maggie again or, oh shit, from the fact that Maggie just accidentally called her “Alex,” but her entire self is suddenly screaming at her to fix it.

“Oh,” Alex says softly, looking down at her leg like she’d forgotten it was attached to her body. “Reign,” she says, like that explains it. And in a way, it does, but it explains the cast the same way the wrong ‘your’ explains Maggie being at her door right now.

“Danvers,” Maggie says, trying to get herself under control, “let me inside so you can sit down before you fall over.” And it comes out a little gruff but it’s better than it could have been.

Alex nods, and if it’s a little jerky, well, Maggie can’t quite blame her. Alex holds the door open and Maggie steps through it, quickly spying a set of crutches leaning against the wall next to the door. She wordlessly grabs them and hands them out to Alex, who takes them with a grimace.

Maggie can’t help but laugh. “Wow, you must really hate those.”

Alex rolls her eyes but she’s also smiling in a way that Maggie knows she doesn’t quite mean to be. “Of course I do. But Kara keeps ‘just happening to fly by’ when I try not to use them, so…”

Maggie snorts and immediately hates herself. Fucking Ruiz.

Alex hobbles into the kitchen. She politely asks, “you want a drink?” but she’s already pouring two scotches.

And Maggie never meant to come in, she just wanted to prove that she understands basic grammatical concepts, but she doesn’t want to be rude. And it’s her favorite brand and that would just be a waste. And she’s pretty sure leaving your ex alone to drink unsupervised while they’re on painkillers and can barely move is not exactly the foundation for the amicable breakup she’s been hoping for.

So she walks over to the counter like it’s not a fucking haunted house and she pulls out both stools and sits on one of them. “Thanks,” she says, much more belatedly than she should.

“You know, I’d wondered,” Alex says finally, after a few moments of excruciatingly awkward silence. “About the text. And the ‘your.’” She takes a long sip of her scotch before she turns to fully look at Maggie, and she has a teasing look in her eye like when she used to bet Maggie about the flash grenades she’d never actually planned to give. “I actually asked Kara to check that you weren’t body snatched by a White Martian or anything.”

Maggie manages not to snort this time. “Shut up,” she mumbles. “You did not.”

“Cross my heart,” Alex says, and she’s grinning and her whole face is twinkling, and Maggie hates her even more than she hates Ruiz.

But then there’s this moment, where Alex should say _would I lie to you_ with an arched eyebrow and then Maggie should make a _hips don’t lie_ joke, and it should end with laughing kisses or very gentle stationary sex. But, of course, if Alex said _would I lie to you_ with an arched eyebrow, Maggie would have to say, _yes, about what you wanted your life to be, for months_ , and that’s not a conversation either of them wants to have again.

But so then neither of them knows what to say.

Maggie drinks her scotch too quickly, and Alex picks at her nails.

“Where are you going?” Alex finally asks.

Maggie turns to look at her, confused, because while she’s been thinking about trying to figure out how to extricate herself, she hasn’t so much as moved a muscle yet.

“The passport,” Alex adds. “You said you’re leaving the country?”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Um, Laura’s bachelorette party. The south of France.”

“Oh,” Alex says softly. “Right.” Laura, one of Maggie’s college teammates, who now lives in Paris.

They were supposed to go together to the wedding in a couple of months.

“I, uh, wasn’t planning to go, but I have some vacation days that won’t roll over, and I got a flight on miles, so…”

She doesn’t have to mention that they’re the days and miles she was saving up for their honeymoon. Alex remembers.

“That, um,” Alex swallows, hard. “That sounds nice.”

And Maggie is halfway through responding with something bland and useless about the trip when Alex abruptly interrupts her.

“I babysat today.”

Maggie stares at her, mind both blissfully blank and buzzing with anger. “Okay,” she manages to say, not bothering to hide her anger and frustration. With Alex, with the situation, with whatever asshole kid Alex was with. With why they have to talk about this now, instead of Maggie being able to leave after demonstrating her perfect grasp of the English language and rehashing nothing about their relationship.

“Kara’s new friend, Sam, you guys met once I think? Anyway, she had a business trip and I offered to watch her daughter for her.”

“Okay,” Maggie says again, her voice as dead as she can make it. She doesn’t know them well, but _fuck_ Sam and _fuck_ the kid and _fuck_ god damned everything in the world.

“It was fun,” Alex says, and she’s still not looking up. It’s like she’s telling her scotch the details of her day, and Maggie wishes she were literally anywhere else in the world. “She’s twelve and um, someone at school is bullying her, so I put on a suit and went to that girl’s house and threatened her with my FBI badge. I told her I’d throw her in juvie if she didn’t stop.”

And that’s absurd enough that Maggie looks over, aghast. “Alex, you _didn’t_!”

Alex grins at her, her mouth crooked and her eyes alight again, and _fuck_. This is worse than the wrong ‘your.’

“I did. And it…it was fun,” she says again, but the light is fading from her eyes and she sounds sad now, and Maggie wishes autocorrect had never been invented.

“But it wasn’t…at the end of the night, her mom came back and got her, and I was…I was happy, to give her back.”

Maggie waits, holding her breath. She doesn’t know where this is going, and it’s not as bad as knowing the worst is coming but it’s definitely worse than realizing you sent your ex-fiancée a text without an important apostrophe.

“I think…I think that maybe what I need – to be happy, and to feel like I have a full life – is to have kids in my life. But I don’t…” Alex takes a breath, then, and lets it out loudly, and Maggie can hear that she’s close to crying.

She hopes Alex doesn’t cry. She won’t be able to handle touching her, but she’s never been able to stand by and do nothing when Alex has been crying.

“But I don’t think they have to be _my_ kids. What I had, today, with Ruby…that’s enough, for me.” Alex takes a long moment, and Maggie doesn’t know what to do with her hands or her heart or her eyes, so she just pretends to take a sip of her drink even though her glass has been empty for a while.

“And Kara…she definitely wants to have kids, to make more little Kryptonians, you know? And we’ve talked about, um…about me being really involved? With her kids? Whenever she has them. And being sort of somewhere between aunt and parent.”

Alex slowly, fearfully, quietly, turns to look directly at Maggie. “I – I always just wanted to be loved. To be enough for someone. And I think…I had never thought I’d get married or really love someone like that. Be happy, like that, with intimacy or a person, that way. So I’d always thought that if I had a kid, then…you know. That would be my chance.”

And Maggie does know, in a way. But Alex had been so _sure_. Maggie stays quiet.

“But you…” Alex lets out another little breath, and they both watch as Alex reaches up and gently takes a strand of Maggie’s hair between her index finger and her thumb. “I forgot to recalculate, after you. After you…” she chokes a little bit but she says it. “After you loved me. After we loved each other.”

“Alex,” Maggie whispers, because she has to say something but there’s nothing she can say right now.

“I wanted someone to think their life was better because I loved them. And I wanted someone to know that my life was better because they were it. And I just…my hypothesis was that that person needed to be a kid – my kid – but I never…I never tested it. I never ran it through the algorithm, again, after you.”

“Alex,” Maggie says again, because this is their _life_ that Alex is talking about and she’s such a nerd and she’s said _recalculate_ and _algorithm_ and _hypothesis_ but she hasn’t said love or relationship or marriage in anything but the past tense.

“But I was wrong.” Alex lets go of Maggie’s hair to reach back up and tuck the whole chunk behind Maggie’s ear. “You asked me, before it ended, if you were enough for me.” Maggie doesn’t even nod, because she remembers. It’s the most clearly she’s ever asked anyone to love her. Even autocorrect couldn’t have ruined that.

“And I said no, but I was wrong. You’re enough. This, us,” Alex grips her glass with both hands, now, like she’d like to be grabbing Maggie and squeezing her but she doesn’t know if she can. “This is enough. This, and being the best aunt in the world for Kara’s future little aliens. That’s enough for me. You’re more than enough, for me.”

Alex pauses for a second, and Maggie can barely breathe.

She just came here to manually correct what had been autocorrected – to fix the smallest, most insignificant problem in a life that has gone entirely to shit. And now Alex is sitting here, broken leg and shattered heart, offering her everything she’s ever wanted.

“So I guess, now, I need _you_ to think about it,” Alex says, after the silence has gone on for what must have been a long time. “About if this is something you could want again. If I could…” Alex gives up and actually cries, and Maggie’s heart seizes up. “If I could be all the family you need, again.”

And Maggie had texted with a small favor, and had started her text with the note that she didn’t mean to be a bother to Alex, and she had come over because her stupid phone had chosen to betray her personal brand by using the wrong ‘your,’ and now Alex is sitting here asking Maggie to be her family.

 _Ruiz is going to have a fucking field day_ , is the only thought that’s clear enough for Maggie to understand.

 

* * *

 

Maggie leaves, promising Alex that she’ll think about it. She tries to fuss over Alex a little bit, but Alex turns down all of her offers of help. “I’m okay,” she insists. “I can manage.”

So after a while Maggie stands, and she forces Alex to stay sitting at the counter, to not walk her the three steps to the door.

“You’ll think about it?” Alex asks again, her face somewhere between hopeful and terrified, and Maggie nods, trying not to laugh at the absurd idea that she’ll think about anything _but_ this for the next several weeks.

“You’ll…you’ll call, or text, when you decide? Of if you just want to talk, or anything?”

Maggie nods again. “Yeah, Danvers, I will.”

And something in Alex’s face twitches at being called Danvers, and Maggie honestly isn’t sure which name is more intimate at this point.

So Maggie just drops a quick kiss onto the top of Alex’s head, because she has the willpower of a drunk toddler, and whispers “use your crutches” into Alex’s hair, and then she turns and leaves the apartment before Alex can follow her or say anything else.

And when she texts to Ruiz to come get drunk with her at the bar, she makes sure all her grammar is perfect.

 

* * *

 

_Maggie: Hey Danvers. I’ve been thinking about you’re proposal. And if your sure that it would be enough for you, that you’d be happy as an aunt, then I think we should talk about what that could mean for us._

_Maggie: Which I guess means, I’m very seriously considering you’re offer._

_Danvers: When should I expect my in-person apology for all those wrong ‘your’s?_

_Maggie: Open you’re front door._

_Maggie: Jesus Christ, I heard that. Use you’re crutches!_

 

* * *

 

Ruiz is, as Maggie expected, completely insufferable. For the next several years.

And whenever Maggie texts him about “ducking paperwork,” and follows it up with her typical tirade against autocorrect, he always sends back a flurry of smug emojis and the reminder that, this time around, autocorrect got her a _wife_ , and so maybe she should be a little more grateful.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and being the best imaginary friends in the world.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, see people making my eyeballs bleed by intentionally using the wrong 'your,' and support my other work. Heart ya.


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